


Running from the Time Police

by Morphologist



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural, Buzzfeed Unsolved True Crime, Gen, Humor, Made For Each Other, Moral Dilemmas, Partners in Crime, Story Alignment: Chaotic Dumbass and Dumbass Bastards, but platonically, but sometimes on opposite sides of the law
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24016816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morphologist/pseuds/Morphologist
Summary: Shane Madej and Ryan Bergara have been reincarnating near each other and haphazardly influencing each other's lives for almost two hundred years, courtesy of a certain demon named Steven. Steven is curious to see if two guys can rectify the crimes of their past selves if given enough chances. Shenanigans ensue as every incarnation of Shane and Ryan are uncannily similar yet starkly different from each other. Anyway, welcome to the train wreck that is reincarnation!
Relationships: Ryan Bergara & Shane Madej
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

Banjo McClintock stares at the grandfather clock in the corner of the brightly lit room he's sitting in.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He glances at the painting on the wall, a small girl holding what looks like a winged monster made of spaghetti with big googly eyes and a wide dripping maw of tomato sauce.

His nose crinkles up at the sight of that thing just as a figure suddenly materializes across from him out of thin air.

" Oh!" He flinches and immediately covers his shock with a smile, " Hello there!" No comment about the discorporeality of the entrance, Banjo was much too concerned about other things, such as his complete lack of memory as to how he got here.

" Hmm. Quite chipper. You'll be surprised how common that reaction is." The figure said. 

The man is the same age as Shane but something about his slim, relaxed form is... forbidding. He wears a very unusual suit. It's pin-striped grey, with a gold tie. He has a long face with a pair of stark brown eyes behind a pair of horn rimmed glasses. His hair is a very quaint color, a pale, silver blue. He looks very content somehow in this curious room without any doors or windows. Clearly, he owns the place.

That's a very nice grandfather clock in the corner and this is a very nice desk... Banjo wondered what nice trinkets this guy has hidden in the shelves or in his desk. Even a small thing can fetch a good price perhaps...

" You're wondering right now exactly how to capitalize on this aren't you?" The man asked, his voice is smooth and amused. 

" How to what now? Oh, capitalize? Do I look the type to you, mister?" Banjo remarked with mock surprise.

The man rolled his eyes and started to flip through the papers on his desk. He pulls a fancy fountain pen out of the five fancy fountain pens on the wood block in front of him, beside a solid copper paper weight. That paper weight could fetch a fortune at a pawn shop, Banjo is sure of it. But Banjo already has a bad feeling that he's not getting out of this one easy. Since he has no memory whatsoever of how he got here. And by the looks of it...

This room has no doors and no windows.

How did I even get in?

" If you don't mind me asking sir... how did I get here? You have a mighty fine place, but it's a little odd to me that, uh-"

" That you have no way out of this one?" The man's eyes flickered up from the page with a mixture of disinterest and finality. 

" Well, it just isn't practical. Never been in a room without a door before. But I take it... that you do this often?" Banjo asked.

" Not as dumb as you look." The man replied, " Don't let that get to your head though."

" Why thank you." Banjo replied, his anxiety mounting steadily behind his relaxed posture. 

" Here." The man made a small mark at the top of a page and handed it over. There was nothing on the page except a single line in the very middle and some unreadable script at the bottom. Literally unreadable, as in symbols that looks much more complicated than Ancient Egyptian. 

" What's... what's this?" Banjo tried to sound good natured but he didn't like a signature page where he can't even read what's he's signing for. Who fucking would.

" Sign it." The man replied, one arm folded over his chest, the other balancing his chin. 

" Are you serious right now?" Banjo asked, copying his exact body language more to mock him and delay this than to outright turn it down.

" Do I look like I'm joking to you." Banjo had never been more intimidated by a man with horn rimmed glasses before, and he'd robbed a lot of banks with men wearing horn rimmed glasses in them.

" Well, I don't know. I've met a lot of jokers, some who think they're quite a big deal actually." Banjo replied pointedly. Thinking back to authoritarian sheriffs who demanded payments from poor townsfolk who didn't even deserve the half of it. 

" If this were a joke, do you think we'd give you the doors you're used to, buddy?"

" Pardon?"

" Your whole life, Benjamin Jeremiah McClintock, you've thought in terms of ins and outs. Never walked into a situation without thinking what you'd get out of it. Never gone on a mission without a plan of how to escape if the need came. Tell me, 'Banjo', why is it that you feel the need to take from others what is meant to be theirs?"

" You're asking me a question I don't rightly know the answer to, sir. Only that I'm not as wicked as you think I am."

" You've robbed..." the man glances down at the pages, " Approximately eleven and a half banks, trains, and shops across nine states. Got away almost every time. It is true that then you distributed some of this money to those who direly needed it, but you also hurt many in the process."

" Eleven and a half?"

" Almost a twelfth."

" Oh! Oh no!"

" Yeah."

" Well, you might as well shoot me in the leg and call me a Nancy, wow. You've got more on me than any single sheriff's ever had, eh?"

" Um... Yeah."

" Eleven and a half you said?"

" Eleven and a half."

" That's funny, I remember robbing about eleven big ones. Don't exactly remember each heist in crystal clear detail, I admit. But not at all a twelfth one, mind you."

" And that's why you're here."

" Right, right... Ok."

" And it doesn't matter to anyone what you have to say at this point. The verdict is already in. And that is... you're at the end of the line."

" Right, ok. But you haven't told me your name yet, sir. Or how you happen to know so much."

" Sign the page, please."

" Not saying I won't. I just feel like you ought to tell me a thing or two about yourself first."

" I've had a dozen or so names over the years. None of them would be pronounceable to a being like you." The man replied.

" Are you an angel? A demon perhaps? Let me guess, you're a demon. Seeing that I'm a prisoner here." Banjo said, " Well, I always did think I'd end up downstairs, if you know what I mean."

" No. I don't admire that expression." The man replied.

" But that's what you are right? A demon? What should I call you? Azazel? Alexander? Alexandria?"

" Why are you going for all the A's?"

" First letter of the alphabet, I don't know."

The man actually smirked to himself and kept flipping through the pages. Banjo felt like though he might not have a way out, he may have a chance to lighten the sentence by being personable.

" There aren't any favors I can grant you to get you out of what you've gotten yourself into. Your charm won't work down here."

Well dang, that was straightforward and a little too concrete.

" Your record is both ordinary and somewhat contradictory in itself. We have taken this into consideration." The man said, "Now sign the page."

" I have a right to know more about my case, sir. And what you mean by we."

" Interesting choice of a name, a musical instrument, Banjo. Even Mozart didn't name himself 'Violin' for short."

" You're welcome. And I mighty appreciate you at least telling me I ain't alive anymore and that this isn't just all in my head or something. But that's even more of a reason that you ought to tell me what you're going to do to me."

" They said you'd be a negotiator up to the last minute."

" And who's they?"

" Out of the five stages of grief, you always landed in the bargaining stage and never, ever, seemed to progress past that. Did you know people who end up in here tend to express the exact stage of grief they usually stall at in life?"

" Pardon?"

" So it's no surprise to me that you're stalling, stalling, stalling. Now please sign the page, boy."

" Ay, don't go calling a grown man boy now, mind you, I don't take kindly to that one." Banjo replied, pointing a hand sharply while reverting to a neutral tone.

The man smirked, amused at hitting a nerve. 

" Bottom line is, mister," he continued, " You're at the tail end of a certain list. It's not a good list. But it's not the worst list either. That's the good news. The bad news is, you still may end up on the worst list one day, and at that point, there will be no point in meeting you here. You'd go directly... to the bad place. Where most folks like yourself go. The contradictory nature of your record was reviewed by several, and the consensus is that you are to have your cycle extended instead of terminated."

" Where most... cycle... what?" and suddenly Banjo didn't have anything to say to that. His voice seemed to die in his throat. That was never a good sign. When his voice refused to go on while his mind keeps spinning, formulating counters but unable to speak them.

" You inherited your father's smart mouth, Banjo. But not his cruelty. You inherited your mother's optimism in the face of chaos, but not her full set of morals, especially not the one about thievery. It's as if you are a Frankenstein's monster. Made up of mismatched parts from the very beginning. When in reality, we all begin as more or less a blank state, and what becomes of us is almost all the impact of where we grew up and what happened to us along a journey that has no aim and no goal."

" .... I take it, you and I aren't so different." Banjo said. He didn't know how he knew, he just did. The man seemed very aware of things he'd never even given much thought to.

" And do you really think that's a good thing?" The man replied, steepling his fingers with a sigh, " That you have such a record of bringing financial ruin and probably tragedy upon many families?"

" No, I... No, I knew I haven't been... haven't been the most honest of people." Banjo replied honestly.

" Unlike what you might believe, every life is part of a cycle. Depending on your behavior during it, you may or may not get to continue in the cycle. If you have done incredible good, to the point where my superiors cannot deny it, your cycle ends and you get to go to a very good place. Some however, do precisely the opposite. And end up... downstairs."

Banjo swallowed the lump in his throat and glanced at the clock, which he realized had stopped ticking at the end of the other man's sentence.

" So... you're saying I get a second chance of some kind. That's what you're saying." 

“ That’s right. You’ll be sent back into the world very shortly. But more will be expected of you this time.”

“ More… how?”

“ This is about morality, Mr.McClintock. You need a lesson in morality.”

Banjo’s blood suddenly began to boil. His lips set in a fierce line and he leaned forward in his chair, “ My family and my neighbors woulda starved if I stuck with the law. So maybe some actions based on necessity turned into an obsession, then a habit, and I went overboard with some of it. But you can’t tell me that everything I did was because I had a choice.”

“ Everyone has a choice.” the figure across the desk replied snidely, “ Some merely have to fight harder to make the harder ones.”

“ Who makes the rules?”

“ I’ll see you again, Mr.McClintock. You may even remember me the next time. Or you won’t. It’s really hit or miss with that sort of thing.”

Before Banjo can shoot any response back, the walls of the room begins to shake. 

“ Aw hell…” Banjo mutters. 

He grips the arms of his chair, jaw set firmly and glares back at the man across the table. 

“ You got a name?” Banjo asks.

The figure replies: “ They call me Steve.”

“ Well, that’s better than something out of my world I guess.”

“ Steve is short for something much longer than Steven, you know. My soul is ancient compared to yours."

“ Ah-ah-ah. Guess what? I don't care. Do your worst, buddy.” Banjo wags a finger at him as chunks of cement begin to fall out of the ceiling and the walls, and the floorboards, revealing absolutely nothing but oozing pitch black above, below, and all around him.

“ Till next time… _Steve_.” Banjo says. 

“ Till next time... _Shane_.”

Banjo’s eyes widen.

“ Wait a second, who the hell is-”

_C-C-C_

_R-R-R_

_A-A-A_

_S-S-S_

_H-H-H_

_……._

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Raymond "Quickdraw" Ortega startles into wakefulness and nearly falls out of his seat. 

He grabs the table in front of him, quickly steadying himself. 

Hmm, this is odd. Why is there a painting of a monster made of spaghetti on the wall?

And who is this fancy looking guy sitting across from him? 

Raymond immediately avoids eye contact with the dapper gentleman in the pin-striped suit sitting across from him. Instead, Raymond takes in his environment, surprised by the expensive fixtures all around the walls, the elegant grandfather clock, and the small ornate details of Biblical imagery on the clock itself. The room is actually... quite beautiful, if a little forbidding because he doesn't remember arriving here at all. 

He feels like the spaghetti monster's googly eyes are winking at him through the painting- but quickly writes it off as his eyes playing tricks on him. 

He always did hate making eye contact with figures in paintings.

Raymond sits still for a moment, more distracted now by the man's silver-blue hair than anything else. 

Oh, wait... wait a minute. 

Why isn't there a door?

Raymond blinks. He swivels around again, then looks every which way. 

Wow, there really isn't a door. How did he miss that at the beginning?

The stranger smiles at him. It's a personable smile. 

" Uh..." Raymond begins. 

" Hello, Mr.Ortega. It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person." 

Raymond's hand immediately shoots down to his waist for his revolver, only to find that nothing's there. 

The stranger tilts his head, raising an eyebrow. 

" How did you... where am I?" Raymond asks. He's tense, shoulders stiff and fingers now clamped tightly over the wooden arms of his chair. He tips his head now, not used to missing both his gun and his trademark Stetson hat that usually shields his eyes from the glaring Mojave sun, " You drug me? You work for Juan Castillo at the cartel down in Los Alamos?"

" No, Mr.Ortega, I am merely here to give you some information regarding where you will be going... next." 

" I go wherever the next job takes me. What is your point?"

" Your job is precisely why you are here today."

" Pardón?"

" How long have you been working at this particular job of yours?"

" A long fucking time, just give it to me straight. Who the hell are you, cabrón? You work for the Belmont Brothers on the Arizona border, don'tcha? You here 'cause you're still annoyed I beat their cousin's ass. Well, I tell ya, I take no survivors!"

" Ok, alright, calm down, good sir."

" You up to some funny business, huh? This is the silliest goddamned room I ever been in my life, who the hell builds a room with no door? How the hell did you even get me in here? Basic physics don't make sense in all this, what the hell, you trying to pull?"

" Hold your horses-"

" You took Shiela! You took my horse and put a bullet between here eyes, didn'tcha? That's it! I ain't got time for this!" Raymond shoots to his feet, and kicks his seat backwards, then lunges across the table. 

The other guy rolls his eyes, and vanishes in a puff of smoke, then rematerializes suddenly a few feet behind him. 

Raymond doesn't have time to process that this bastard basically just teleported, and instead whirls around and aims a punch for the insolent stranger's face, only to be dragged in a completely different direction by an invisible force and slammed into the wall. 

" How'd the hell you do that?" Raymond cried, pressed up against the wall by an invisible force as the stranger takes a step closer. Then another, and another.

" My name's Steven. I work for some folks you've probably never given much thought to..." the man chided, " Anyway, try to remember the last few moments of before you got here. Try to remember where you were, say, yesterday. You killed a man didn't you? Surely, you remember _that_."

" Yesterday?" Raymond huffed indignantly, " 

" See, that's precisely why you're here-"

" _This is Hell isn't it?_ " Raymond suddenly shrills. For a guy who has a tough facade, his voice can get really high-pitched and piercing when he's stressed. 

" W... wait a minute, I didn't say that." Steven sighs, covers his face with a palm.

" Oh God, are you going to possess me? Begone, Devil! I say! Begone! Get outta here! Get!" Raymond starts kicking and flailing at the air. 

" Ok, look, you aren't going to the bad place. At least not yet. My superiors gave me a list and I have read through your past. There are things there that are worth noting. Like how young you were when you became a mercenary. How you had few other options. If you had taken perhaps, one of those other options however, you wouldn't be in this position today. But you took the most lucrative job you could get given what you had at the time, and that required you to be... a killer. A killer for hire. And you were efficient."

" Were? I _am_ efficient!" Raymond roars, " Hell, you know nothing about me!"

" I know that you took a life when you were just a boy, and you did so completely in self defense. That's actually excusable by our rules. But then that gave you... some feeling of power. To know that you had the ability to do that at all and how powerful you felt afterwards. You thought, maybe life and death don't really matter. That the line is actually so thin. And perhaps you polarized the world. Saw evil where there was none, and good where there was little of it. You did something to protect yourself. But then it became something more than that. You thought you could take life and death into your own hands. And though you didn't receive pleasure from hurting others, you saw it purely as business... you still saw something to gain nonetheless. You're not the only mercenary I have dealt with. Of course, your case overlaps with many who emerge from war-torn environments. Technically, you are not redeemable, but I've been running a little experiment lately, a program for second chances."

" Oh God... how... how did I die?" Raymond's panic suddenly devolves unexpectedly, into a nervous, defeated sort of stillness. 

" I'm not allowed to disclose the exact nature of your demise." Steven said, " Company rules."

" Dammit... But I gotta know."

" Why do people want to know how they died? I don't understand it." Steven chuckled.

" Because it's _my_ life. And I deserve to know how it ended."

Steven paced right and left, thinking to himself for a moment and then simply shook his head.

" Was it bad? Did I piss my pants or something? Was it a wound to the head? Was it quick? Are there maggots all over me right now? Or did they get rid of me clean?"

" Like I said, I'm not allowed to disclose any information regarding what happened to you on your final assignment."

" If I'm going to spend an eternity in the Lake of Fire, at least let me know the goddamned truth."

Steven paused for a very long moment. A _very_ long moment. 

" No." he said finally. 

Raymond kicks the wall behind him, still unable to break free of the invisible force pinning him there. 

" You've got a new life coming, though." Steven added nonchalantly, " Most guys don't get a second chance. The odd thing about you is that even though you killed for hire, you've also saved quite a few lives as a vigilante outlaw, once gunning down an entire band of other outlaws who were trying to take a small town by force. You only took jobs that were hits on wealthy businessmen, never taking out any hits for personal slights or family feuds. So you did have a code of your own, even though it wasn't a clean one."

" I used to pray to God. Son of a bitch never listened though."

" We've all done that." Steven replied.

" So what gives you the right to place me in a whole new pair of boots and tell me 'hey your life's over'? I never asked to be born, dammit. I don't want your new life! I don't deserve it anyhow. Just throw me in Hell. I'm _done_." Raymond growls, resolute in his belief, and already reeling from a concoction of emotions that he hasn't allowed himself to feel in a very long time. Rage, shame, white hot and eating him from the inside. He thinks about everything terrible he's ever done. And how _little_ he felt over every one of those things. Then thought about the paranoia, the shadows that followed him around at night. No feeling attached to those assignments, and yet there was guilt all along after all, buried inside of him.

" Normally... I hand you an agreement you would need to sign." Steven said. He snapped his fingers and a piece of parchment wriggles up into the air from the surface of his desk. Ryan sees a bunch of complicated symbols on it that he can't read. " But, it doesn't really matter whether you sign or not. Because either way, you can't change what's going to happen."

" Then what's the point of that paper anyway?"

" To ease my co-worker's conscience." Steven replied, " But in the end, I think he'll agree with me." 

The walls start to shake, hairline fractures 

" Am I going to Hell now?" Raymond asked, voice shaking. He's sweating profusely, still unable to break from the wall. 

" I think you'll thank me that I gave you a chance to get into the good place." Steven replied, " Many, many years down the line."

" I-I don't want to go back." 

" Why not? You'll have a chance to rectify all those things you messed up before. What is there for you to lose, hm?"

" My identity. Who I am."

" And why does that matter to you?"

" I... I don't know."

" You love being a contract killer so much, that you'd turn down the chance to be a _good_ person?"

" I don't want to lose... my memories. I don't know... why I even care about that. But..."

A crack in the wall opens right behind his back, and a black substance starts oozing out, dragging his body back as the wall sinks and cracks further.

" Wait! Am I gonna forget everything?" Raymond cries, flailing as the substance grips him and curls over his form.

" Most likely. Well, maybe not every _single_ thing. There will be some echoes you may have to fight. But most nearly everything, yes."

" I don't want this! Please!"

" You won't be alone in this Ryan. There's people out there in more or less the same boat as you."

" My name's... not..." Raymond's eyes widened, and his voice trails off.

Raymond holds his breath, as the ravenous encroachment of darkness finally fastens itself over him. 

C-c-C-

R-r-R-

A-a-A-

S-s-H-h-....


End file.
